As the camera phone photo suggests, we went to the Royal Botanical Gardens yesterday to look at palms, water lilies and some rather sensuous Henry Moore sculptures.

I hadn’t been to Kew Gardens since 1999 or 2000, when I visited the nearby Public Record Office (now the National Archives) to dig out some facts from records relating to the Bloody Assizes. Little had changed over the intervening years. The area round Kew Gardens was mostly unchanged, bar the addition of a Starbucks and a Tesco Express: for the rest, the middle classes were still snorting around in herds.

We met up with some friends in The Railway pub and headed off to the Botanical Gardens after a quick pint. It was a good pint, and the gardens were excellent. But both palled when compared to the journey home.

Where we made our mistake was leaving the Gardens at closing time. Sadly, most of the visitors seemed to have homes to go to and decided to leave, en masse, at the same time. A good number jammed up the pavements on the way to the station, doing that irritating thing of walking four abreast, braying loudly and stepping leisurely in the manner of gnus scratching their gonads on the tips of the long grass.

But even gnus can be startled and dispersed with the aid of a pushchair, and we soon found ourselves back on the station platform along with a few hundred people. From time to time a tube train would come along and suck up a chunk of the crowd, and eventually our overground train appeared.

I took charge of the pushchair and nipped the sleeping boy into a space in the vestibule. My wife managed to bag a seat. I looked up and discovered the primary catalyst for the overcrowding: three bicycles propped against the opposing door, the opening frame of a health and safety inspector’s snuff movie.

The warning beeps for the train doors started playing and then, just as the hatch was snapping shut, someone jammed a massive pushchair in the gap.

This was no ordinary pushchair. It wasn’t a zippy runaround. It wasn’t even one of those display cases on wheels, much favoured by those Stoke Newington parents for whom parenthood is a lifestyle and fashion option. No: this was a big, fuck-off charabanc of a thing, with at least two chairs and an additional, bolted-on car seat. It was being wielded by two energetic Frenchmen, one with the haughty beak and tweed jacket of a holidaying notaire. Both looked as though they had stepped in quicktime off the set of Zazie dans le Métro.

Train vestibules are not normally very spacious, and those in Silverlink carriages are no exception. Any Englishman who sees such a space, already filled with one pushchair, three large bicycles and assorted human beings would take one glance at his big, fuck-off charabanc of an infant travel system, give up and stand swearing as he watched the train disappear down the tracks.

Not these chaps. In less time than it would take to utter allez-oop, they had the wheeled monstrosity on their shoulders and the doors had closed behind them. Then, listening to them all trying to work out what to do next, I realised the intruders were part of a party, which included the women and children behind the glass screen on which I was leaning.

M le Notair and his ami couldn’t go forwards. They couldn’t go backwards. And if they had tried to go sideways they would have been stuffed. So they did the first sensible thing since I met them and rested the end of their machine on the three stupidly parked bicycles.

Next job was to unclick the car seat from the rest of the frame. There was a small baby asleep in it, and I suppose they wanted to hand it over to its mother before it woke up and started calling them names. I gave them a hand at this point: after all, it wasn’t the child’s fault to be connected with such a bunch of goons.

At moments like this, high art demands that a bovinely stupid busybody enters the scene. We weren’t disappointed.

“Excuse me,” intoned Bovinely Stupid Busybody, as she barged her way towards the melée. “Please don’t rest that on my brakes.”

“?” said both Frenchmen, silently, as they exchanged glances.

“Don’t rest that thing on my brakes. You’ll, you’ll, you’ll… cut them.”

“?”

“You can rest it on the seat. That’s okay. But not the brakes. I don’t want you to cut them.”

“?”, said both Frenchman in that ‘?’='who is this crazy bitch?’ sort of way.

But they lifted up their machine, clearly considering what the hell to do next.

Luckily for them, they didn’t have to consider for long. We pulled into the next station, Gunnersbury, and one of the women behind the glass screen (who had been scrutinising the route map) yelled that they were on the wrong train.

Now, if it’s hard enough getting a pushchair with the dimensions of an ocean liner into a crowded vestibule, it’s even harder getting it out of another door, especially when that door is blocked by three large bicycles and you are accompanied by a screaming party of pissed off women and children.

But they managed it. As the doors were closing, M. le Notaire jammed his machine in the doors, freeing up his companion for some bicycle shifting. Mrs Busybody helped out with a bit of shouting about her precious bike, but was roundly ignored. And then, having spat out all trace of crazy French situationists (they must have been, surely?), the remaining occupants of the carriage heaved out a collective sigh of relief.

Mrs Busybody decided it would be safer to guard her bike, and was soon joined by her two friends.

“I just can’t believe those people,” said one to the others. “It was so obvious there wasn’t any room.”

Silly cows.

If ever you feel like trying your hand as a citizen journalist, don’t just get hold of a pen, notebook and camera: make sure you ditch any 11-month-old babies you happen to be looking after.

That’s what I should have done this morning when Dave Hill got in touch to say Boris Johnson was coming to town.

I do say, though, that I put up a brave show. Dave’s email plopped into my inbox at 12.15pm, Boris was due at Wyversdale House, on the Woodberry Down estate at 1.30pm, and I managed in the interim to pack not only the notebook and camera, but also to dress and feed the infant (who had spent his morning staging a miraculous recovery from a wheezy cough which, of course, had prevented him spending the day with his childminder).

I even got as far as the Woodberry Down estate, roughly in time for Boris’s arrival. The only problem, though, was that the infant had other ideas and was beginning to behave in that way he often does 10 minutes before going into major meltdown. So I made a snap decision to disappoint Boris and instead head to Finsbury Park to share (safe from any maternal gaze) a Ribena ice-pole with the baby. With children bribery buys peace.

It was with great delight, then, that I saw a mildly bewildered looking Boris standing outside Manor House tube station, a rucksack slung over his shoulder and a mobile phone in his hand. As I approached he had obviously made a decision of his own and started heading in the opposite direction to the housing block at which he was expected.

So I ramped the pushchair into first gear, drew up alongside Boris. pointed the right way and said:

“I think you want to go that way.”

“Do I?” said Boris.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re supposed to be at Wyversdale House.”

“Am I?” said Boris.

“Yes. I was going to come along and see you, only,” I continued, pointing at the baby, who was miraculously being as quiet as Clissold Leisure Centre has been for the last few years, “he was getting rather fractious. So we’re going to the park.”

“Ah. Who are you?” asked Boris.

“I’m Ben. Ben Locker. How do you do?”

“Good to meet you,” said Boris, shaking hands.

“I was invited along by Dave Hill. He’s a journalist.”

“A journalist?” said Boris, and I think a note of surprise, if not revulsion entered his voice.

“Yes. He’s a local blogger. He writes for the Guardian and stuff like that.”

“I’m supposed to be meeting someone called Maureen,” said Boris.

“No idea,” I said, shrugging my shoulders exaggeratedly and pulling my best ’search me, guv’ face (though in retrospect I think he must have meant local councillor Maureen Middleton).

And on that note, Boris headed off in the right direction to meet his pals, and I took the boy to Finsbury Park, kicking myself for not having the presence of mind to ask the politician for his photo.

Still, it was a good ice pole, and it revived the infant’s spirits considerably. And as luck would have it, on my way home, I saw Boris being shown round Woodberry Down estate by a bevy of councillors and local people. So this time I took (an albeit distant) photo as I walked past. It’s at the top of this post, and looking at it I’m beginning to think I probably had a better time giving illicit Ribena ices to the child - those folks don’t seem to be enjoying themselves very much at all, least of all Boris himself.

Next week: a chance meeting with Andrew Boff in an E8 chip shop…

There’s a terrifying and hilarious thread over at Mumsnet, filled with embarrassing confessions like:

When on your period, do not hold you nose during a massive sneeze when wearing a thong (t’was long ago) and light, baggy summer trousers while walking in a busy London street. Believe me when I say you may cause a large internal implosion resulting in your tampon leaving your vag at the speed of light and shooting out of your right trouser leg. It will cause much amsement and disgust to group of Brixton schoolboys and intense embarrassment to you.

And:

Do not drunkenly flick used condom to one side and fall asleep after the act. You will find it stuck to your briefcase at 7.30 am the following morning, whilst strap-hanging on the circle line.

And:

Do not put hair gel onto the cat to give it a souxie and the banshees look, find the hair gel was obviously made of DDT and removes the cat’s hair from its ears, top of head and bridge of nose for 3 months.

And:

Do not, on your wedding night, put presents, your husband’s £260 kilt & £100 sporran in the bottom of the wardrobe to keep them ’safe’ - your spectacularly drunk dh will mistake the wardrobe for the en-suite bathroom of your posh hotel room & piss all over said items. You will awake mid-pee to hear the pattering sound & hiss hysterically at him to stop. Pattering sound will abate & just as you breathe a sigh of relief it will start up again causing you to leap out of bed & shove offending dh towards the bathroom & hold him up in front of the loo. You will then spend the next 30 minutes using all the towels in the bathroom to clean everything up while your brand-new dh staggers out of the bathroom, falls onto the king-size bed, crawls across the bed onto the floor at the other side & up onto the chaise longue(sp?) where he will pass out leaving you to lie alone on your wedding night staring at the ceiling & seething.

More here if you’re feeling strong enough. I haven’t laughed as much in months…

I’m still in decorating chaos, but a friend sends me a tale that’s too good not to share:

By Sam Reeves, Scottish Press Association
A dwarf performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was rushed to hospital after he glued his privates to a vacuum cleaner.
Daniel Blackner - who performs in the Circus of Horrors as Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf - said the incident happened yesterday as he prepared for a show.
As part of the spectacle, the dwarf pulls a Henry vacuum cleaner across the show attached to his penis.
But a special attachment connecting the 42-year-old to the appliance came loose.
He decided to fix the broken apparatus with extra strong glue, but he left it to dry for only 20 seconds, instead of 20 minutes.
This meant when he connected himself to the vacuum cleaner, the glue was not yet dry, and his penis was immediately stuck fast.
He was taken to the accident and emergency department of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where, he said, nurses struggled for an hour to free him.
Mr Blackner said: “It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed A&E with a vacuum attached to me.
“I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short lived.”
A hospital source confirmed that they treated the performer.
But a spokesman for the Royal Infirmary said he could not comment on individual cases.

NB: this is thought to be the first recorded incident in which a man is taken to hosptial with a hoover attached to his private parts and has a convincing explanation for how it happened

Thinking of robbing a bank? Put off by inelegant facial disguises such as balaclavas or those awful laddered tights? Then worry no more: all you have to do is dress up as a picturesque bit of shrubbery and walk off with the loot.

One of my favourite Hackney eccentrics, “Wheelchair Man”, who spends his days directing the traffic from the middle of busy roads, has just had a plug on Radio 4’s Invisible People, which this week is about London’s bus control centre. Sadly they missed the anecdote about Wheelchair Man launching himself off a footbridge over the North Circular with a rope tied round his neck: a lorry driver saw him and stopped underneath the bridge, so instead of killing himself he just landed on the roof. More lives than a cat…

Being a kind-hearted sort of chap, and in no way inclined to laugh at people for their weird and creepy pastimes, this morning I photographed some of the numbers on the streetlamp component which, in mild drizzle earlier this week, I wrote down in an exercise book for a local eccentric. If he’s reading this, all he needs to do is click on the thumbnail for a bigger, more legible image.

I’ve had some pretty sad hobbies in my life, foremost amongst which must have been my tendency, aged 13 or so, to dress up in combat fatigues and hide in hedges with a dodgy, cheap .22 airgun, hoping to pick off passing woodpigeon. But in meeting a streetlamp enthusiast, I thought I must have uncovered the loneliest hobbiest in the world.

Not so. A quick search reveals that there is a blossoming community of such folk, including this West Midlands specialist, a Northamptonshire boffin (”Northamptonshire has various components around the county, in the main are ELECO, GEC, PHILIPS, URBIS and THORN BETA. Prior to these lanterns were REVO, STANTON and STAVELY COLUMNS and CU PHOSCO.”), a bloke who knows about lights of the 1950s and someone with an equally obsessive interest in his webpage hit counter.

Anyway lads, if you’re reading this, it’s time you banded together in protest and starting rousing up some support in the new generation. When I was at university, students using the observatory allegedly used to break the streetlamps on the path between Andrew Melville Hall and Fife Park, arguing that the glare used to interfere with their stargazing. If such things are still going on now, I think only a university Streetlight & Arc-lamp Devotees Society would have the muscle to save the day.

Get to it men.

What is it about me that attracts these people? In the same way that sprinkling aniseed on your trousers makes one irresistible to dogs, I clearly emit some sort of scent that has eccentrics queuing up for a good sniff.

This afternoon I was walking along Manor Road with the baby. We had just been to Stoke Newington’s Clissold Park, it was drizzling and I was daydreaming about something so nerdy that I refuse to confess to it in public. As we got near to the bottom of Bethune Road, my dreams were intruded on by a voice that was very close at hand.

“Help me. Help me.”

I looked up and saw an Orthodox Jewish man. He was wearing the usual garb, had a grey beard and dull brown eyes, with a light and cloudy ring round each iris.

“Help me,” he repeated, thrusting a soggy exercise book and a biro into my hands. I looked at it. It was covered with numbers, written in a loose, slightly ill-formed hand*.

As I was reading, I realised that my new friend was reciting lists of numbers to me. I switched my glance in his direction and saw that he was peering at the electrical components inside a concrete lamp-post. The safety plate was missing, exposing all sorts of wires, resistors and mysterious metal boxes. The latter were covered in digits, and it was these that interested my chum.

“One Eight Oh. One Eight Four. One Eight Six.”

“You want me to write these down?”

“Yes. Write.” And pointing to the exercise book: “Here”.

Well, why not? It’s only wet. I only happen to be in charge of a baby beginning who is beginning to whinge. I only have some beers under the pushchair that are beginning to lose their chill. Let’s write down some numbers.

Sadly, I’m not good with numbers, and nor am I much interested in them. So, for me, the next minute sounded something like this:

“9870989789WhyamIhere89028904Iwonderifhesdangerous8792489048… Imgettingreallyquitewet89089023whatdidIdotodeservethis8902390″

I might have misremembered the numbers, but the rest is pretty accurate.

Our joint endeavour was sadly interrupted when I realised that the page I was writing on had become too wet to hold a mark from the biro.

“I’m going to have to write on the next page,” I said.

“No. NO,” and pointing at the sodden leaf: “HERE.”

“But it’s too wet,” I said, scribbling the biro across it without making a mark. So I turned the page and made a few zigzags of ink.

It must have convinced, because I soon got another barrage of numbers. This put my instinct for politeness in severe conflict with my distaste for half-witted timewasters.

So, at the next brief pause I took a closer look at what my friend was dictating.

“Six. Three. Ermmm.”

“That’s not a number,” I said. “That says ‘GEC’”.

“What?”

“It says GEC. General Electric Company. They made the component.”

“Write this. Write this,” said my friend.

“No”

“Write this,” he said, switching to a new set of numbers. “Two Three Oh.”

“That the voltage. That’s 230 volts.”

“Write this,” he repled, switching numbers again.

But the new page was already wet, and I was beginning to get irritated.

“Why exactly do you want these numbers?” I asked.

“Why want?”

“Yes, why do you want the numbers?”

“Why want?”

“Yes, what are they for?”

“Better not say,” said my friend, as he edged slightly away, disappointment in his eyes

* I have been a handwriting snob ever since I won the penmanship prize at my Catholic primary school at the age of 10. I used the book tokens I won to buy a Sven Hassel novel about World War II, in which I read my first ever accounts of fellatio and penile dismemberment (actually, both were in the same scene).

“Ario_F” at Altering Labyrinth has a moment of introspection and asks:

I still don’t know where I am headed with this blog. Here is some background music while I reflect and find my bearings: German hip hop band, Fettes Brot with their hit Jein (English: ‘Yes and no’). The song posits the existentialist question: Soll ich es wirklich machen oder lass ich es lieber sein? (English: ‘Should I really do it, or should I just let it be?’) - a question that can only be answered with a resounding Jein of course.

Theatrical German hip-hop set on the Mexican frontier?

That’s not all. As “Ario_F” points out in his next post:

Perhaps just as incongruous and disorientating as German hip hop is Russian ska. To give you an idea here is St Petersburg Ska Jazz Review with their recent, barely noticed hit Too Good To Be True.

I’ll give the last words to “Ario_F”:

Whatever next? Saudi Arabian punk? Norwegian Gangsta Rap? Swiss Death Metal?

Jein!

Walking down my street this morning with baby and shopping. Gentle drizzle, pushchair wheels sticking. Jerked from my daydreams by a series of thuds and bangs and shouts.

I stop and I look up. There’s a short woman inside her house hammering at the window pane, almost trying to scale it. It’s one of those long, fixed panes with a small hinged window at the top. Surely she can’t be trying to climb out of it?

“Ai! Ai! Ai! Yass. You! Stop! Stop! Ai! Ai!”

I stare completely blankly. Are my trousers on fire or something? I check. No, can’t be that.

“Ai! Yass. There a man next door. Who is? Itsa man. He next door..”

I look at the house next door. Sure enough, there’s a man standing in the sheltered doorway. I know who he is. He looks at me with an expression of contemptuous resignation, clearly willing me to pass it on to the excited woman. I do.

“You live here, don’t you?” I say.

“Yes.”

“He lives there,” I say to the woman.

“There a man, there a man. He been knock at door.”

“Yes, he lives there,” I reiterate, beginning to get bored of the situation.

“Who is the man? There a man! There a man!”

“I think she wants to know who you are,” I tell the man.

He gives me another one of those looks. I pass it on.

“I think she wants you to show yourself,” I add helpfully as he begins to step out of his doorway.

The two of them lock eyes and there’s no sign the woman is going to calm down. So I shove the pushchair forward and disappear, leaving them to it.

There’s an hilarious story in this week’s Hackney Gazette. Apparently an 82-year-old has been making a nuisance of himself and has got barred from his preferred bookmaker’s shop.

Jinadu Balogun says he was devastated to be banned from the William Hill branch in Stamford Hill after being accused of being rude to staff and customers.

The pensioner insists he has been a sociable customer for 15 years and has many friends in the shop.

Now Mr Balogun, of Cranwich Road, Stamford Hill, campaigns outside the betting shop every day to be let back inside.

The full article in the printed newspaper has a picture of the guy wielding a copy of the Racing Post outside the shop, but strangely doesn’t mention the exact reason why this ‘war veteran’ got kicked out in the first place. Anyway, I’m not taking bets on whether his protest will still be going on this time next week: it won’t. A quick search shows that there are 10 branches of William Hill within a 1.65km radius of my street.

No wonder Hackney Council magistrates* have given permission for a bookmaker to set up shop on the same street as two others.

*My mistake. See Luke’s comment below.

I’ve just discovered some old files lying around on my computer, one of which is a pre-blog attempt to write the kind of thing I later posted at Hackney Lookout. Most of it isn’t very good, and some is distinctly cringeworthy, but one or two snippets still have the power to raise a smile. Like this:

Saturday 23rd November, 2002: …Went to many other pubs in Hammersmith area and met a great comedy Irishman in the Duke of Edinburgh near Holland Road. “I’ve been coming to this pub for 30 years now. Used to be a gangsters’ pub. But it’s all changed now. I like it. I’ve been a plasterer for thirty years [looks at filthy palms], and I must say it’s good money. I drink and I gamble, but me wife still loves me.” Bill talked to a Norwegian brought up in Ireland: “So what do you think of all these fuckin’ paddies then?”

Yesterday, after I wrote about the driver who had to decide whether or not to drive his bus through St Botolph’s church, Kris pointed out that the “149 is loathsome” and asked “Why do you do this to yourself?”

The best answer I can give is this: I was off to see the dinosaurs. Not the huge, carefully reconstructed bones in the Natural History Museum, but the hilarious and endearing stone monsters in Crystal Palace Park. Created in the 19th Century by the foremost dinosaur expert of the time, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, the sculptures, which were looked upon with scorn as early as 1895, filled me with cheer, not least because I learnt that visiting Americans often come expecting an experience of Jurassic Park proportions and go away feeling that they’ve just seen the garden gnomes of the dinosaur theme-park world.

I don’t care, though. I love that sort of early and sincere amateurism, and nowhere more than in the Horniman Museum’s overstuffed walrus. Who needs wrinkles, anyway?

A gnomic note from my 90-year-old grandfather.

I believe you are both true children of your university determinedly striking blow after blow in the honour of European Civilisation.

WD.

I’d better dash. European Civilisation is going to crumble unless I change the baby’s nappy right now.